[Commlist] CFP Digital Religion 2026

*Call for Papers*
International Conference
*Digital Religion V: Interfaces of Discourse, Society, and Politics*
November 19-21, 2026
University of Lodz, Department of Pragmatics, Poland
Positioned within contemporary struggles over public meaning, social 
affiliation and political legitimacy, digital religion is articulated 
through mediated practices in which claims about faith, community, 
authority and truth become resources for negotiating belonging, 
morality, identity and power.
Digital Religion V invites papers that examine these practices at the 
interfaces of discourse, society and politics, with a focus on digital 
religious discourse both as product and as practice: as a textual and 
multimodal form, and as situated action involving the production, 
distribution, and consumption of religious meanings across platforms, 
publics and institutional contexts.
The interfaces are approached as sites of contact and tension, with 
religious doctrine informing everyday moral judgement, ritual 
participation intersecting with activism, institutional authority being 
negotiated alongside influencer charisma, and private spirituality 
assuming sociopolitical significance. Central to these processes are 
conceptualization, representation, recontextualization and affect: 
religious meanings are made cognitively accessible, salient, and 
invested with the emotional force. Digital affordances, in turn, enable 
their circulation across genres, platforms and publics, attaching them 
to causes and conflicts and intensifying the interplay between religious 
expression, social affiliation and political positioning.
We invite papers addressing, but not limited to, the following questions 
and areas:
• How does digital religious discourse shape public debates, legitimise 
authority or mark the limits of belonging?
• How do social and political conflicts become legible through religion 
in platformed public communicative practice?
• Under what conditions do digital religious practices sustain care, 
solidarity, memory and participation, or produce antagonism, exclusion 
and radicalisation?
• What happens when politics borrows religious repertoires, when 
religious actors adopt platform tactics, and when platforms order 
religious visibility?
• How are institutional religion, lived religion, spirituality, atheism 
and anti-religious discourse brought into contact in digital environments?
• How are religious authority, expertise, authenticity, charisma and 
credibility established, challenged or displaced under conditions of 
platformed visibility?
• How do religious symbols, narratives, values and moral vocabularies 
enter nationalism, populism, conspiracy cultures, extremism and 
culture-war discourse?
• How do metaphors organise the affective and moral intelligibility of 
digital religious discourse, shaping how publics recognise threat, 
victimhood, duty, crisis, hope or belonging?
• How are religious identities politicised, and how are social or 
political conflicts religionised, across digital platforms?
• How do digital religious discourses construct publics, 
counter-publics, minorities, moral communities, dissent and exclusion?
• How are gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, migration, diaspora, 
class, generation and disability articulated through religious and 
anti-religious discourse online?
• How does digital religious communication respond to war, displacement, 
ecological crisis, violence, inequality, insecurity and social change?
• How does affect shape the public force of digital religion, from fear, 
hope and compassion to resentment, moral outrage, grief and collective 
grievance?
• How do digital affordances, algorithms, metrics, moderation, 
recommendation systems and visibility regimes condition religious 
discourse and participation?
We welcome theoretical, methodological and empirical papers from media 
and communication studies, discourse studies, religious studies, 
theology, sociology, anthropology, political science, linguistics, 
cultural studies, digital humanities and related fields. Contributions 
may focus on particular platforms, communities, traditions, 
controversies or media genres, as well as on comparative, transnational 
or historical perspectives.
The conference will be organised in a hybrid format, with the 
possibility of both on-site and online participation. While the main 
conference language is English, a limited number of papers in Polish may 
also be accepted.
*Conference date*
November 19-21, 2026
**
*Conference venue*
Faculty of Philology
University of Lodz
Pomorska 171/173
90-236 Lodz, Poland
**
*Conference website*
_https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026_ 
<https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026>
*Conference email*
**
(_digital.religion /at/ uni.lodz).pl_ <mailto:(digital.religion /at/ uni.lodz.pl)>
**
*Submissions and deadlines*
Abstracts in English, along with a short bio including full name, email 
address and affiliation, should be submitted by September 30th, 2026 via 
the conference submission form at: 
_https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026_ 
<https://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026>
Notifications of acceptance will be sent to authors by October 7th, 2026.
*Conference fee*
The conference fee is EUR 80, and the payment deadline is November 3rd, 
2026.
A reduced fee for PhD students and participants from low-income 
countries is EUR 50.
*For participants from Poland* – additional financial information
Osoby, które będą potrzebowały faktury, prosimy o dokonanie płatności 
przelewem do 03.11.2026 i wpisanie danych do faktury w formularzu 
zgłoszeniowym.
Dane do faktury dla uczestnika konferencji ‘Digital Religion 2026’:
Imię i nazwisko:
Nazwa i adres instytucji:
NIP Instytucji:
Upoważniam Uniwersytet Łódzki w Łodzi do wystawienia faktury VAT bez 
mojego podpisu:
Data i czytelny podpis
Any inquiries and questions regarding the conference should be sent to 
(_digital.religion /at/ uni.lodz).pl_ <mailto:(digital.religion /at/ uni.lodz.pl)>
*Proceedings*
Selected papers will be considered for publication in /Lodz Papers in 
Pragmatics/ (De Gruyter-Brill) and an edited volume with an 
international publisher.
**
*Organizing committee*
Monika Tosik, Department of Pragmatics, University of Lodz, Poland
Jaroslav Franc, Department of Communication, Palacky University Olomouc, 
Czech Republic
Renata Sedlakova, Department of Communication, Palacky University 
Olomouc, Czech Republic
Damian Guzek, Center for the Study of the Digital Public Sphere, 
University of Silesia in Katowice Department of Communication, Palacký 
University Olomouc, Czech Republic
Veronika Müllerová, Department of Communication, Palacký University 
Olomouc, Czech Republic

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